Short Summary

In the Ivory Coast the Interafrican Electrical High School opened its doors for the first term on the third of September.

Description

In the Ivory Coast the Interafrican Electrical High School opened its doors for the first term on the third of September. The school will provide high grade teaching in English and French, in all areas of electricity, electronics and computer science.

SYNOPSIS: The opening of the Interafrican Electrical High School at Bingerville about twenty kilometres (12 miles) east of Abidjan is an important occasion for the developing economies of Africa.

The school is associated with SUPELEG - the renowned school of electricity in Paris, the Polytechnic in Lausanne, Switzerland, and the central Polytechnic in London. Students will benefit from a modern language laboratory and will be taught in both French and English.

Thirty-one of the thirty-three members of staff were recruited from the European schools for the institutions' first year operation. The school was created and financed by the Union of Producers, and Distributors of Electrical Energy of African Countries (UPDEA) and a group of seventeen French and English speaking countries. The European Economic Community has been a major financial contributor.

The student body which numbers sixty is made up of people from Senegal, Zaire, Guinea, Niger, Upper Volta, Togo, Liberia and the Central African Empire as well as the Ivory Coast.

Facilities in the school are the most up-to-date and aim to make sure graduates have practical and technological training as well as scientific and theoretical education.

According to the schools founders, electrical energy is of the utmost importance to developing economies. They hope that the electrical engineers who train at the Interafrican High School will eventually work on projects that will provide electricity to the furthest outposts of the continent. And for many Africans these future projects will mean electrical lighting in their homes for the first time.